intouts when you were done, or a cassette, if you'd animated it. There'd always he a couple of girls down at the far end, doing

 

 

 

 

35 The republic of desire

plastic surgery on pictures of themselves, fiddling around with their faces and hair, and they'd get printouts of those if they did one they really liked.

ъydell would be up closer to the entrance, molding these grids of green light around a frame he'd drawn, and laying color and texture over that to see how different ones looked. But what he remembered when he clicked into the ъepublic of Desire's eyephone-space was the sense you got, doing that, of what the space around Dream Walls was like. And it was a weird thing, because if you looked up from what you were doing, there really wasn't anything there; nothing in particular, anyway. But when you were doing it, designing your car or whatever, you could get this funny sense that you were leaning out, over the edge of the world, and the space beyond that sort of fell away, forever.

And you felt like you weren't standing on the floor of an old movie theater or a bowling alley, but on some kind of plain, or maybe a pane of glass, and you felt like it just stretched away behind you, miles and miles, with no real end.

So when he went from looking at the phone company's logo to being right out there on that glassy plain, he just said 'Oh,' because he could see its edges, and see that it hung there, level, and around and above it this cloud or fog or sky that was no color and every color at once, just sort of seething.

And then these figures were there, bigger than skyscrapers, bigger than anything, their chests about even with the edges of the plain, so that ъydell got to feel like a bug, or a little toy.

One of them was a dinosaur, this sort of T. ъex job with the short front legs, except they ended in something a lot more like hands. One was a sort of statue, it looked like, or more like some freak natural formation, all shot through with cracks and fissures, but it was shaped like a wide-faced man with dreadlocks, the face relaxed and the lids half-closed. But all stone and moss, the dreadlocks somehow stacked from whole mountains of shale.

Then he looked and saw the third one there, and just said

'Jesus.'

This was a figure, too, and just as big, but all made up of television, these moving images winding and writhing together, and barely, it seemed, able to hold the form they took: something that might either have been a man or a woman. It hurt his eyes, to try to look too close at any one part of it. It was like trying to watch a million channels at once, and this noise was rushing off it like a waterfall off rocks, a sort of hiss that somehow wasn't a sound at all.

'Welcome to the ъepublic,' said the dinosaur, its voice the voice of some beautiful woman. It smiled, the ivory of its teeth carved into whole temples. ъydell tried to look at the carvings; they got really clear for a second, and then something happened.

'You don't have a third the bandwidth you need,' the dreadlocked mountain said, its voice about what you'd expect from a mountain. 'You're in K-Tel space...'

'We could turn off the emulator,' the thing made of television suggested, its voice modulating up out of the waterfall-hiss.

'Don't bother,' said the dinosaur. 'I don't think this is going to be much of a conversation.'

'Your name,' said the mountain.

ъydell hesitated.

'Social Security,' said the dinosaur, sounding bored, and for some reason ъydell thought about his father, how he'd always gone on about what that had used to mean, and what it meant now.

'Name and number,' said the mountain, 'or we're gone.'

'ъydell, Stephen Berry,' and then the string of digits. He'd barely gotten the last one out when the dinosaur said 'Former policeman, I see.'

'Oh dear,' said the mountain, who kept reminding ъydell of something.

'Well,' said the dinosaur, 'pretty permanently former, by the look of it. Worked for IntenSecure after that.'

'A sting,' said the mountain, and brought a hand up to point at ъydell, except it was this giant granite lobster-claw, crusted with lichen. It seemed to fill half the sky, like the side of a space ship. 'The narrow end of the wedge?'

'They don't come much narrower, if you ask me,' the storm of television said. 'You seem to have gotten our Lowell's undivided attention, ъydell. And he wouldn't even tell us what your name was.'

'Doesn't know it,' ъydell said.

'Don't know his ass from a hole in the ground, hee haw,' said the mountain, lowering the claw, its voice a sampled parody of ъydell's. ъydell tried to get a good look at its eyes; got a flash of still blue pools, waving ferns, some kind of tan rodent hopping away, before the focus slipped. 'People like Lowell imagine we need them more than they need us.'

'State your business, Stephen Berry,' said the dinosaur.

'There was something happened, up Benedict Canyon-'

'Yes, yes,' said the dinosaur, 'you were the driver. What does it have to do with us?'

That was when it dawned on ъydell that the dinosaur, or all of them, could probably see all the records there were on him, right then, anywhere. It gave him a funny feeling. 'You're looking at all my stuff,' he said.

'And it's not very interesting,' said the dinosaur. 'Benedict Canyon?'

'You did that,' ъydell said.

The mountain raised its eyebrows. Windblown scrub shifting, rocks tumbling down. But just on the edge of ъydell's vision. 'For what it's worth, that was not us, not exactly. We would've gone a more elegant route.'

'But why did ~OU do it?'

'Well,' said the dinosaur, 'to the extent that anyone did it, or caused it to he done, I imagine you might look to the lady's husband, who I see has since filed for divorce. On very solid grounds, it seems.'

'Like he set her up? With the gardener and everything?'

'Lowell has some serious explaining to do, I think,' the mountain said.

'You haven't told us what it is you want, Mr. ъydell.' This from the television-thing.

'A job like that. Done. I need you to do one of those. For me.'

'Lowell,' the mountain said, and shook its dreadlocked head. Cascades of shale in ъydell's peripheral vision. Dust rising on a distant slope.

'That sort of thing is dangerous,' the dinosaur said. 'Dangerous things are very expensive. You don't have any money, ъydell.'

'How about if Lowell pays you for it?'

'Lowell,' from that vast blank face twisting with images, 'owes us.'

'Okay,' ъydell said, 'I hear you. And I think I know somebody else might pay you.' He wasn't even sure if that was bullshit or not. 'But you're going to have to listen to me. Hear the story.'

'No,' the mountain said, and ъydell remembered who it was he figured the thing was supposed to look like, that guy you saw on the history shows sometimes, the one who'd invented eyephones or something, 'and if Lowell thinks he's the only pimp out there, he might have to think again.'

And then they were fading, breaking up into those paisley fractal things, and ъydell knew he was losing them.

'Wait,' he said. 'Any of you live in San Francisco?'

The dinosaur came flickering back. 'What if we did?'

'Well,' ъydell said, 'do you like it?'

'Why do you ask?'

'Because it's all going to change. They're going to do it like they're doing Tokyo.'

'Tokyo?' The television-storm, coming back now as this big ball, like that hologram in Cognitive Dissidents. 'Who told you that?' Now the mountain was back, too. 'There's not a lot of slack, for us, in Tokyo, now...'

'Tell us,' the dinosaur said.

So ъydell did.

 

She had the hat back on, when he took the helmet off, but she was holding those sunglasses in her hand. Just looking at him.

'I don't think I made sense of much of that,' she said. She'd only been able to hear his side of it, but it had been mostly him talking, there at the end. 'But I think you're flat fucking crazy.'

'I probably am,' he said.

Then he got the time and charges on the call. It came to just about all the money he had left.

'I don't see why they had to put the damn thing through Paris,' he said.

She just put those glasses back on and slowly shook her head.

 

 

 

 

 

36 Notebook (2)

The city in sunlight, from the roof of this box atop the tower. The hatch open. Sound of Skinner sorting and resorting his belongings. A cardboard box, slowly filling with objects I will take below, to the sellers of things, their goods spread on blankets, on greasy squares of ancient canvas. Osaka far away. The wind brings sounds of hammering, song. Skinner, this morning, asking if I had seen the pike in the Steiner Aquarium.

- No.

- He doesn't move, Scooter.

Sure that's all Fontaine said? But he'd found her bike? That's no good. Wouldn't go this long without that. Cost an arm and a fucking leg, that thing. Made of paper, inside. Japanese construction-paper, what's it called? Useless, Scooter. Shit, it's your language. Forgetting it faster than we are ... Tube of that paper, then they wrap it with aramyd or something. No, she wouldn't leave that. Day she brought it home, three hours down there spraying this fake rust on it, believe that? Fake rust,

Scooter. And wrapping it with old rags, innertubes, anything. So it wouldn't look new. Well, it makes more sense than just locking it, it really does. Know how you break a Kryptonite lock, Scooter? With a Volvo jack. Volvo jack fits right in there, like it was made for it. Give it a shove or two, zingo. But they never use 'em anymore, those locks. Some people still carry 'em, though. One of those up 'side the head, you'll notice it ... I just found her one day. They wanted to cart her down to the end, let the city have her. Said she'd be dead before they got her off anyway. Told 'em they could fuck off into the air. Got her up here. I could still do that. Why? Hell. Because. See people dying, you just walk by like it was television?

 

 

 

 

 

37 Century city

Chevette didn't know what to think about Los Angeles.

She thought those palm trees were weird, though. On the way in, Sublett's electric car had pulled up behind this big white trailer-rig with A-LIFE INSTALLATIONS, NANOTъONIC VEGETATION across the back of it, and the heads of these fake palm trees sticking out, all wrapped in plastic.

She'd seen it all on tv once, with Skinner, how they were putting in these trees to replace the ones the virus had killed, some Mexican virus. They were kind of like the Bay maglev, or like what ъydell and Sublett said that that Sunflower company was going to do in San Francisco; these things that kind of grew, but only because they were made up of all these little tiny machines. One show she'd seen with Skinner, they'd talked about how these new trees were designed so that all kinds of birds and rats and things could nest in them, just like the ones that had died. Skinner told her that he'd run a Jeep into a real palm tree, in L.A., once, and about ten rats had fallen out, landed on the hood and just sort of stood there, until they got scared and ran away.

It sure didn't feel like San Francisco. She felt kind of two ways about it. Like it was just this bunch of stuff, all spread out pretty much at random, and then like it was this really big place, with mountains somewhere back there, and all this energy flowing around in it, lighting things up. Maybe that was because they'd got there at night.

Sublett had this little white Eurocar called a Montxo. She knew that because she'd had to look at the logo on the dash all the way from Paradise. Sublett said it rhymed with poncho. It was built in Barcelona and you just plugged it into the house-current and left it until it was charged. It wouldn't do much more than forty on a highway, but Sublett didn't like to drive anything else because of his allergies. She said he was lucky they had electric cars; he'd told her all about how he was worried about the electromagnetic fields and cancer and stuff.

They'd left his mother with this Mrs. Baker, watching Spacehunter on the tv. They were both real excited about that because they said it was Molly ъingwald's first film. They'd get excited about just about anything, like that, and Chevette never had any idea who they were talking about.

ъydell was just spending more and more time on the phone, and they'd~ had to stop and buy fresh batteries twice, Sublett paying.

It kind of bothered her that he didn't give her any more attention. And they'd slept on the same bed again, in the room at the motel, but nothing had happened, even though Sublett had slept out in the Montxo, with the seats tilted back.

All ъydell ever did now was talk to those ъepublic of Desire people Lowell knew, but on the regular phone, and try to leave messages on somebody's voicemail. Mr. Mom or something. Ma. But he didn't think anybody was getting them, so he'd called up the Desire people and gone on and on about the whole story, everything that happened to them, and they'd recorded it and they were supposed to put it in this Mr. Ma's voicemail. ъydell said they were going to stuff it there, so there wasn't any other mail. Said that ought to get his attention.

When they'd got to L.A. and got a room in a motel, Chevette had been kind of excited, because she'd always wanted to do that. Because her mother had always seemed to have real good times when she went to motels. Well, it had turned out to be sort of like a trailer camp without the trailers, with these little concrete buildings divided up into smaller rooms, and there were foreign people cooking barbecues down in what had been the swimming pool. Sublett had gotten really upset about that, how he couldn't handle the hydrocarbons and everything, but ъydell had said it was just for the one night. Then ъydell had gone over to the foreign people and talked to them a little, and came back and said they were Tibetans. They made a good barbecue, too, but Sublett just ate this drugstore food he'd brought with him, bottled water and these yellow bars looked like soap, and went out to sleep in his Montxo.

Now here she was, walking into this place called Century City II, and trying to look like she was there to pull a tag. It was this kind of green, tit-shaped thing up on these three legs that ran up through it. You could see where they went because the walls were some kind of glass, mostly, and you could see through. It was about the biggest thing around; you could see it forever. ъydell called it the Blob.

It was real upscale, too, kind of like China Basin, with those same kind of people, like you mostly saw in the financial district, or in malls, or when you were pulling tags.

Well, she had her badges on, and she'd had a good shower at the motel, but the place was starting to creep her out anyway. All these trees in there, up all through this sort of giant, hollow leg, and everything under this weird filtered light came in through the sides. And here she was standing on this escalator, about a mile long, just going up and up, and around her all these people who must've belonged there. There were elevators, ъydell said, up the other two legs, and they ran at an angle, like the lift up to Skinner's. But Sublett's friend had said there were more IntenSecure people watching those, usually.

She knew that Sublett was behind her, somewhere, or anyway that was how they'd worked it out before ъydell dropped them off at the entrance. She'd asked him where he was going then, and he'd just said he had to go and borrow a flashlight. She was starting to really like him. It sort of bothered her. She wondered what he'd be like if he wasn't in a situation like this. She wondered what she'd be like if she wasn't in a situation like this.

He and Sublett had both worked for the company that did security for this building, IntenSecure, and Sublett had called up a friend of his and asked him questions about how tight it was. The way he'd put it, it was like he wanted a new job with the company. But he and ъydell had worked it out that she could get in, particularly if he was following her to keep track.

What bothered her about Sublett was that he was acting sort of like he was committing suicide or something. Once he'd gotten with the program, ъydell's plan, it was like he felt cut loose from things. Kept talking about his apostasy and these movies he liked, and somebody called Cronenberg. Had this weird calm like somebody who knew for sure he was going to die; like he'd sort of made peace with it, except he'd still get upset about his allergies.

Green light. ъising up through it.

They'd made her up this package at the motel. What it had in it was the glasses. Addressed to Karen Mendelsohn.

She closed her eyes, told herself Bunny Malatesta would bongo on her head if she didn't make the tag, and pushed the button.

'Yes?' It was one of those computers.

'Allied Messenger, for Karen Mendelsohn.'

'A delivery?'

'She's gotta sign for it.'

'Authorized to barcode-'

'Her hand. Gotta see her hand. Do it. You know?'

Silence. 'Nature of delivery?'

'You think I open them or what?'

'Nature of delivery?'

'Well,' Chevette said, 'it says "Probate Court," it's from San Francisco, and you don't open the door, Mr. Wizard, it's on the next plane back.'

'Wait, please,' said the computer.

Chevette looked at the potted plants beside the door. They were big, looked real, and she knew Sublett was standing behind them, but she couldn't see him. Somebody had put a cigarette out on one, between its roots.

The door open, a crack. 'Yes?'

'Karen Mendelsohn?'

'What is it?'

'Allied Messenger, San Francisco. You wanna sign for this?' Except there was nothing, no tag, to sign.

'San Francisco?'

'What it says.'

The door opened a little more. Dark-haired woman in a long pale terrycloth robe. Chevette saw her check the badges on Skinner's jacket. 'I don't understand,' Karen Medelsohn said. 'We do everything via GlobEx.'

'They're too slow,' Chevette said, as Sublett stepped around the plant, wearing this black uniform. Chevette saw herself reflected in his contacts, sort of bent out at the middle.

'Ms. Mendelsohn,' he said, 'afraid we've got us a security emergency, here.'

Karen Mendelsohn was looking at him. 'Emergency?'

'Nothing to worry about,' Sublett said. He put his hand on Chevette's shoulder and guided her in, past Karen Mendelsohn. 'Situation's under control. Appreciate your co-operation.'

'Wally' Divac, ъydell's Serbian landlord, hadn't really wanted to loan ъydell his flashlight, but ъydell had lied and promised he'd get him something a lot better, over at IntenSecure, and bring it along when he brought the flashlight back. Maybe one of those telescoping batons with the wireless taser-tips, he said; something serious, anyway, professional and maybe quasi-illegal. Wally was sort of a cop-groupie. Liked to feel he was in with the force. Like a lot of people, he didn't much distinguish between the real PD and a company like IntenSecure. He had one of those armed response signs in his front yard, too, but ъydell was glad to see it wasn't IntenSecure. Wally couldn't quite afford that kind of service, just like his car was second-hand, though he would've told you it was previously owned, like the first guy was just some flunky who'd had the job of breaking it in for him.

But he owned this house, where he lived, with the baby-blue plastic siding that looked sort of like painted wood, and one of those fake lawns that looked realer than AstroTurf. And he had the house in Mar Vista and a couple of others. His sister had come over here in 1994, and then he'd come himself, to get away from all the trouble over there. Never regretted it. Said this was a fine country except they let in too many immigrants.

'What's that you're driv